Gender Roles
by Laryna6
Summary: Sorta AU and OOC, but then it's humor. Alia asks the question we all want the answer to: why does Zero look like a chick? But then, why does Alia? It's not like 'she's' female either. The chest additions allow you to wear pretty clothes and store snacks.


Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman X. Capcom does. Please don't sue: I'm having budget hassle as it is.

Okay. This was written to point out that robot masters and reploids? Don't have XX or XY chromosomes, or even chromosomes period. Nor do they use long things that spray stuff out for reproduction except for paint sprayers, welders, and so on or contain eggs. Hence, _they are neither male nor female_, and would have no reason whatsoever to have equivalents for what are, to them, utterly useless organs except to look human or be humanlike.

As they only have one 'gender' which is none at all, either all reploid/reploid relationships are homosexual (same gender) or none are. Please, people: pick one. Also, all reploids that look male or female are crossdressing. Crossdressing is pretending to be a gender you are not. Zero is not male, Iris is not female: They are robots. Excuse me, I mean reploids. Colonel and Iris are from the same personality matrix, the reploid equivalent of the same embryo. Hence, they are identical twins, yet one appears 'male' and one appears 'female.' Do I need to go on?

Though, maybe they might want extra volume to keep food or parts that won't fit into the male chest's volume inside of, which is what human females use breasts for in any case…

-

Alia really did think she was going to like it at Maverick Hunter Headquarters. The difference between the researchers fighting for reputation and the heroes fighting for justice was quite dramatic. She'd thought some of her fellow scientists had been oddballs, but they cared about what people thought. Those who had saved the world had nothing left to prove.

For instance, a male scientist would never have been willing, let alone eager, to get involved in a long and wandering conversation about the sheer win of having long blond hair. Alia loved her hair. She'd saved for it for ages. Still, it was rather jarring to be talking about this with the crimson hunter. Yet, now that she thought about it…

"Zero," Alia finally asked carefully, "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure. What?"

"I'm sure you've been asked this so many times you're sick of hearing it, but why do you use the male pronoun and a male voiceprint when you look like a female model?"

"Because I was built as a female model, and the voiceprint and being called 'he' instead of 'she' were the only concessions I was willing to make to humans and their stupid gender roles. I love my hair and since I'm such a weird design Dr. Cain didn't even know if he could get rid of the imitation boobs without killing me. My main processor's where a human heart is, so reducing chest size would take at least three months of redesign work. That's probably why my designer went with a female shape as well as these shoulders, actually. I don't get the tech stuff, but because of how everything's hooked up I need the extra volume."

"I keep spare headsets and snacks and so on in mine." Still, "Why would human gender roles matter? I mean, I got the chest compartments added because I love the hair, they get more clothing and so on options, and the voiceprint is prettier. I haven't encountered any trouble because of it even though I'm a scientist."

"Alia, you're a 'woman' who stays home and sends 'men' out to do things for her that contribute to the good of the group. That _is_ the female gender role. or three-fourths of the time it is anyway. Females in combat, on the other hand, their instincts really don't like." Zero sighed. "It's really stupid. I mean, it makes sense for them, but we don't have babies or real gender anyway. We're all neuter."

"Sexism… makes sense?"

"Yeah, just not in the way they think it does. They used to think that the reason women stayed at home and had kids was because men were superior. Wrong. It was because men are expendable. A woman dies, all her future children die with her. A man dies, he gets a Darwin Award. The optimum ratio is one breeding male to three females or something, to maximize good genes getting passed on and genetic diversity. Before the Cataclysm, they were overpopulated: they needed less kids. Afterwards? Men were stronger, and it was their duty to protect women. So guess who stayed home, safe, and _fertile_ and who went out into the wilderness and got their genes scrambled? A sperm bank's a good substitute for a dick, but not for a womb.

"Guess who got the best access to food and medicine, meaning they stayed healthy enough to have kids? Guess who got all the scientific training because they were there to get it? To humanity as a species, men are just there to gather resources and get themselves killed so the best genes get passed on. Women do the most important thing of all: have kids. And since they're the ones who stay at home they're the ones who run it. So, a man being in combat is good: he's defending the childbearers and being tested to see if his genes are any good or not. A woman in combat is, from the _species'_ perspective, wasting her valuable self and it's a very bad thing for her to do."

"How do you know all this?"

"It got banged into my head while I was complaining about how I was being treated and objecting to making concessions like my voiceprint. The pronoun I don't care about. Well, 'it' is insulting, but she-versus-he's just one letter. I liked my voiceprint, damn it." Zero did something that would have been called a pout on someone less… 'masculine?" "Hey, X!" He waved and X headed over. "Tell her about the human gender stuff that cost me my voice."

"After the Cataclysm, with the population so low, they really needed children and hence their instincts really couldn't tolerate the idea of anyone 'female' in combat or any sort of danger," X agreed. "That's why the Irregular Hunters were completely 'male.' It got better for awhile, since reploids could take over most of the cleanup safely so the death rate and risk of extinction decreased dramatically, but then the wars started. The adult human population is about 87 female right now."

"The mavericks are killing that many men?"

X paused. "Not outright. Humans have an equivalent of the various performance boosters reploids use for emergencies. The boosted state is called 'being stressed.' It's good in the short term provided you prevent it from backfiring, but just like the reploid versions it's not good in the long term. If a mother is sufficiently stressed the accumulated poisons and so on of certain stress categories can kill unborn children, sometimes without them even knowing they're there. Females are more resistant to those poisons, along with various others non-physical hazards, which is why females would have been the better choice for post-Cataclysm cleanup if it weren't for the fact the species couldn't afford that."

Poor Dr. Cain. "For one thing, females have two copies of the X chromosome while males have only one. That means that if one copy is damaged by radiation they have a backup, and so many important things are on that one. Men were optimized to survive physically dangerous situations, females were optimized to survive childbirth and the legions of health hazards that involves."

"But doesn't that mean less children are born and defeat the purpose?"

"The risk of death triggers them to both want to live and to have their genes carried on, hence there are more opportunities for conception and that more than makes up for it. In any case, the current birth rate is about 70 female. For the species, that's a good thing, as it means they start at about the optimum ratio for child production, but for a society used to a very different ratio…" X shrugged. "Dr. Cain was rather unusual. A male being an archeologist and going into hazardous areas was acceptable, but there were very few males in the higher level courses he took except ones going into equally dangerous areas."

"I've been to human areas and the ratio looked about right." Yet according to her datapad they weren't putting her on.

"Yes, that's because most women work from home and live with other females to share child-raising duties. Now that reploids are handling both cleanup and combat, the usual human male's job is a gofer of some sort, buying groceries and so on for female clients and sometimes gratitude for someone being especially helpful is not expressed solely in zenny. That allows males to have the several partners their instincts desire, females to have a large pool of potential fathers to select from, and the lack of a single father for those females' children improves genetic diversity enough to compensate for the less than optimum number of males."

"I thought the optimum human reproductive arrangement was a single member of each sex mating for life." That was the ideal in everything she'd read…

X shook his head. "That's the optimum for keeping the population stable. The optimal factors for population decrease are: more males than females; cultural acceptance of relationships that do not produce the maximum amount of children such as polyandry or someone having an infertile or same-gender mate; and mating arrangements that are not permanent. The first two are obvious, the third one means that females cannot be sure that the male will hold up their end of the child-for-child-support bargain and hence have fewer children. Marriage was originally a purely economic arrangement, and a lot of cultures actually thought that it was a bad thing to bring love into it and damage the professional relationship. The equivalent of sleeping with a superior officer: the emotional attachment makes it hard to be objective. And then they can fall out of love, and then what would happen to the children?"

"But isn't sex supposed to be an expression of love/?"

Zero laughed. "Someone's read too many romance novels. Or did you get a couple of X chromosomes installed along with the snack compartments?"

"Well, it can be, and it's certainly wonderful for them to do with someone who loves them, but the reason they evolved sexual organs and the act itself is for reproduction. Love without sex and sex without love are certainly not rare. They were quite often the norm. For instance, the ladies knights paid court to were not supposed to be their wives, and were often someone else's. And then there's the concept of a 'Mistress' as opposed to a wife. A wife was supported for the sake of children and duty: a 'Mistress' was a woman they supported, or not, because they loved them, or at least enjoyed their company on more than a one-time sexual level. Before they began to become extremely focused on sexual fidelity instead of economic fidelity, wives and mistresses often got along perfectly well. They had totally different relationships with the male, so there was no need to be jealous. And during the Restoration in England, it was almost assumed that wives were sleeping with other males on the side, and if they were caught nothing happened but their husband being made fun of."

"Oh…"

"Yeah," Zero agreed. "That's why I'm glad we don't have that gender nonsense. It's annoying just having to deal with humans having it." He pointed at X, "I mean, look at 'him.' Hear that voice? He's pretty indeterminate. You could see him as a 'she' without any actual changes to anything."

Yes, it was like one of those pictures where you could either see two children or a skull. "I picked the male pronoun because Dr. Light was male." X shrugged. "He designed me this way so I would have the option."

"I did because I thought I would prefer to be a female to a male if I were human, since they have more options," Alia said. "What about you?"

"Male," Zero said firmly. "Forget the pretty clothes, they get all the cool toys."

"You know, I think female," X said thoughtfully. "I like looking after people." Shrugging again, he added, "It's really too late to change pronouns now, though. They all think of me as male, and they tend to find 'sex changes,' not that I would be changing anything but how I would like to be addressed, rather confusing even though they've had the technology to make actual changes to their actual genders for ages. Not to mention that I'm a hunter, and the same things that made Zero switch make it a bad idea for me to."

"Stupid humans and their stupid gender roles," Zero agreed. "You'd be cute as a female model. As a male model you look like jailbait even though you're the oldest person on the planet."

"Thank you." X smiled at the compliment. "I personally think that you're more attractive according to the standards of beauty applied to females. As a male, you're rather severe, so the lack of clarity of your gender comes across as asexuality, devoted to honor and duty only."

"As a female, I look like one of those warrior princess types," Zero agreed. "I know, I'm pretty sure that was my maker's idea. But you remember when I did the switch. I was all about being a hunter then." In order to atone.

"I don't know." Alia frowned. "Yes, X does look like a little boy, no offense commander, but I personally think you're quite attractive as a male, Zero."

"Alia, that's not exactly an unbiased opinion." He looked her up and down. "I bet you choose to look like that because that was what you found attractive, right? I look a lot like you decided to, so I'm probably pretty close to your idea of what's beautiful."

"This is what I think of as beautiful in a female," she objected.

"Alia, neither of us is female." The blond(e) tilted his(her) head to the side. "Now that I think about it, X, Iris looks like you."

"I'm sure that's not going to control her decision," Zero's friend assured him.

"Hmm?" Alia asked.

"Iris from Repliforce. Have you met her yet?" Zero asked. "I've been sparring with Colonel for awhile and he brought her along when I brought X along, and we're alternating dates until either she makes up her mind or goes nuts trying." Zero blinked. Wait a second.

X seemed to realized the same thing. "You're right. Why should reploids have a single mate when none of the reasons for doing it that way apply to us and even the humans don't anymore?"

"I bet Iris will go for it. She's said she wished she could have us both enough times. Why on earth didn't we think of this? Stupid humans and their stupid gender and relationship… stuff." X did not approve of bad language. Nor did Zero approve of what he saw when he looked at X. "I'm not having sex with someone that looks like a kid, though. And I hate short hair."

"I'll get another set of hair to wear if you switch to your old voice when I do?"

"I think we have a deal." Okay, Alia understood why X preferred that voice. Zero's original voice was near the border X's was on, but while X's seemed young and innocent hers was experienced and dangerous in a very good way. Switching back, Zero remarked, amused, "We should go out in public like that. Man, that would break so many brains."

"Zero." X chided him.

Zero rolled his eyes. "I know, I know, mustn't mess with the humans by upsetting their preconceptions or whatever. I've heard it enough times."

"It's not that, it's that you were the one letting your preconceptions of humanity affect you. Male-female long-term exclusive relationships are unusual for them nowadays, remember? There's nothing odd about a small group of human females being affectionate in public. It might help us avoid being noticed if we wanted to go somewhere predominantly human incognito, since they'd assume we're not reploids."

Zero just looked at him. "We act more like traditional humans than they do, don't we?"

"I think you're right. We have been missing out." X frowned. "It would actually make them think better of Iris. A female having two males all to herself is being extremely greedy. Not to mention that male/male exclusive relationships are quite frowned upon, as they are depriving many other people of their genes by doing that. The Bible describes male-male relationships as a bad thing for the community or race several times, and female-female sexual activities are mentioned only once, essentially in passing, and it's implied that they were performing them to an unusual extent because the males were failing to do their jobs due to so much male-male activity."

"If we wanted to do really traditional, we'd be three girls and a man, then? You're _not_ going to be the male. I'm not going to be part of a fourteen-year-old's harem when I could do _so_ much better. And I like my hot voice too. Iris?"

"Given that she chose to be female while her identical twin went with male… you know how much she enjoys acting female."

"Yeah, you're right." Nodding, Zero admitted that, "I was just saying it to be funny."

"And relationships with the 'male' aren't permanent, except perhaps for friendship, and we're certainly not going to have a one night stand with _Iris_."

Alia looked down and considered that she was only attached to her snack compartments by a few welds, additional voiceprints were cheap to install, makeovers were fun, and X and Zero were wonderful people that (s)he was very fond of. Not to mention quite attractive, as was the notion of a 'one-night stand' with them. Yes, this love thing was _so_ much easier to deal with without gender and reproduction complicating it.


End file.
